Gospel in Art: The only sign this generation will be given is the sign of Jonah

Jonah and the Whale, by Pieter Lastman, 1621 © Kunstpalast Museum, Düsseldorf

Source: Christian Art

Gospel of 10 October 2022
Luke 11:29-32

The crowds got even bigger, and Jesus addressed them:

'This is a wicked generation; it is asking for a sign. The only sign it will be given is the sign of Jonah. For just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so will the Son of Man be to this generation.

On Judgement day the Queen of the South will rise up with the men of this generation and condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and there is something greater than Solomon here.

On Judgement day the men of Nineveh will stand up with this generation and condemn it, because when Jonah preached they repented; and there is something greater than Jonah here.'

Reflection on the painting

We are all on the look out for signs. It's hardwired into us over the millennia of evolutionary history, be they signs of danger, or social signals that enable the family or tribe to survive and flourish. We look for the meaning of what we observe. So, why shouldn't the people in today's Gospel look for a sign? After all, the Scriptures are full of signs. The miracles of Christ are themselves messianic signs, a revelation or confirmation of who Jesus is as Son of God. John's Gospel, for example, explicitly says that the turning of water into wine at the Wedding feast of Cana was the first of the signs given by Jesus. So, is the crowd here in Luke's Gospel looking for the wrong sort of sign? Or are they looking for yet another sign, when they should really act on those they have already received and ignored?

The wrong sort of sign might be one that gets them off the hook, a false sign God will crush their enemies without further ado on their part. Certainly, what Jesus offers them is the 'sign of Jonah,' where Jonah is himself 'a sign to the people of Nineveh'. What Jonah signals to them explicitly is God's wrath if they fail to repent. Now Jesus re-echoes that call to repentance. For the reader of today's Gospel, there is of course a further depth to this sign of Jonah. As Jonah was three days in the belly of the whale, apparently swallowed up in the chaotic waters of death, so Jesus will be three days in the tomb before His resurrection to glory.

Today's painting by the seventeenth-century Dutch artist Pieter Lastman has a sure comic touch. Jonah is violently ejected from the mouth of this great sea monster with a force communicated not only by his flailing limbs but also the horizontal lines of air or water expelled with him, and even the muscular tension of the monster's flexed body. Jonah's voluminous cloak flaps out behind him in the process, and only just preserves his modesty. It looks likely that he will have a rough landing on the rocky foreshore. The loss of dignity befits a reluctant prophet who had previously been running away from the task that God had set him. God, through his chosen instrument, is not so easily thwarted! The prophet called to preach repentance must first repent of his own folly. Perhaps the humour here might encourage us to cultivate a certain humility, to recognise our own folly in attempting to avoid the sign of Jonah in our own day and age.

Fr Richard Finn is a Dominican friar at Blackfriars, Oxford, where he is currently Director of the Las Casas Institute for Social Justice and teaches Early Church History. A member of the Faculties of Classics, and of Theology and Religion, at the University of Oxford, his book The Dominicans in the British Isles and Beyond, A New History of the English Province of the Friars Preachers will be published by Cambridge University Press in December.

LINKS

Gospel in Art: https://christian.art/

Today's reflection: https://christian.art/daily-gospel-reading/luke-11-29-32-2022-2/